Friday 7 August 1998
Slideshow
Pictures
Drove into Östhammar and found Kaj and Annika’s house without too much difficulty. An interesting heritage house built at the turn of the century. After purchasing the house they had done major renovations to it but had left much of the original woodwork. The walls were about 8 inches thick. The outhouses were left in the traditional red color that 95% of buildings seem to be painted in Sweden. The house was a muted yellow that the remaining 5% are painted in. The house contained the usual modern conveniences.
Kaj, Sebastian and I walked into town to buy pizzas. We had said that we didn’t want them to go to any trouble but would prefer to have a pizza dinner. The pizza place in town was run by Greeks and the pizzas, as all over Europe, are not as good as we have here. While waiting for the pizzas we went for a short walk in town and then picked up the pizzas. I offered to pay but Kaj would not hear of it. Then back to the house where we had a pizza feast of about four different pizzas. Their neighbor Nils joined us at the house. He spends half of the year in Sweden and the other have in Seattle where his children are.
After dinner we went for a walk along the shore of the inlet which is about ½ block from their house and ended up at the dock where Kaj keeps his boat.
We looked around the boat, took some photographs.
Walked through downtown Östhammar.
The town is located on an inlet, in a truly beautiful setting.
As Annika and Rita were walking Annika told Rita about a cottage her father had built at his house and then moved, drawing it by a team of horses to an island in the inlet. Rita was puzzled, for a minute, as she though maybe the water was shallow enough for the horses to drag the cottage to the island. Luckily she didn’t say this out loud. Finally she realized that in the winter the waterway is covered by solid ice.
At the end of town was a restaurant and an outdoor beer garden, in the back of it, where musicians had just set up their instruments. We stopped and had a couple of beers. It was quite cold and they had propane heat radiators burning to keep the patrons warm.
The beer was good the Band wasn’t too bad either. Then we returned to the house, had coffee and liquor and went to bed.
Saturday 8 August 1998
Woke up early. Went out for a cigarette about 7:00 a.m. It was so cold that I decided to dig out the sweater we had bought for Dean, in the tori in Helsinki, to protect myself from the cold. This is August in Sweden?
Annika and Kai had made a nice breakfast for us and after breakfast we prepared to leave. Leif, Helene and Jonna came over to say goodbye.
As you can see, they were wearing light shirts, while we were well dressed and still shivering. Took a few pictures said our goodbyes and left.
Leif had promised to buy a can of Surstömming for Rita. Rita was extremely disappointed that she did not get her Surstömming. I, on the otherhand, was not disappointed at all. As a matter of fact I was ecstatic.
On our way we stopped in Gimo, said goodbye to Hildur then we were off to Broby.
